Simple Breakfast on Lazy Day

Weather has been very weird lately. It can rain cats and dogs in the morning, then becomes so hot and sunny in afternoon or night time. The weird weather will not only make me easily falls sick but also make pimples growing on this face, and have to do home remedies for acne during weekend.

When it rains heavily in the morning, I will be very lazy to step out of the house for breakfast although we can drive the car to our usual breakfast place which is in walking distance only. It’s just something about rain and cold weather that brings up the lazy mode.

The easiest solution is to have a cup of hot Milo and breads with scramble eggs. Yummy! Then I’ll sit in front of the computer and eat while checking emails and plan out the working schedule for the rest of the day.

My First Business Card

Yes, our business card for the newly registered company – Zhng Design Studio – is here! We had it printed at a shop in M mall after saw the classified ad on newspaper next to thermogenic fat burners ad. Price is RM198 for 1000 pieces (500 with my boy’s name and 500 with my name), round corner and double sided. Finished in around one week time.

I don’t know have to be happy cause now I have my very first business card for my our very own business or feel pathetic cause I never had one until now. I know la, who asked me to step into freelance world so early and worked with one local company only before that.

Now, problem occurs, who am I gonna give this business card to? Cause I know no one here that I can refer to as my-friends. -___-”

I Got Big News!

Our marriage registration and certificate is still in work-in-progress and will take another 1 – 2 months. However, we have settled our company registration! Yay! This is not just another-legal-and-official-form but SOMETHING to us and that we are taking this field/business seriously. This is the very first baby step that we take in building and growing our web design business.

Whether it is redesign of age spots removal landing page or company website, bring it on! We are so ready to push ourselves further.

Miss my working space in Medan

I truly madly deeply miss my working space back in Medan. The decent working table with normal height, my Dell desktop with 19″ LCD, and my red chair. See, I don’t ask much as those are very basic things.

For the past 2 weeks, boyfriend and I have been working from this coffee table in his living room. We read blogs, work on web design, research on acne treatment, all those done from our temporary working space. He is using his own Acer laptop while I hijack his white Macbook. He sits on the huge chair while I sit on the small chair. We developed backache because of the sitting position.

Not the best working environment. But hey, beggar can’t be chooser. We are going to bear with this until tomorrow (we are going back KL tomorrow). Will need to wait until we settle down on December if we want to have a decent working space or so called home office.

Bye to old computer table

My 10-years-old-computer-table, that has been with me since I had my first PC, has (finally) broken down. Boyfriend was doing his work using my PC and I sat beside him while putting up my leg *oopss* on the table’s shelf like usual. *GUBRAK* Immediately we heard a very loud voice of something was falling down and yes, the 3 wheels of the table’s back side was broken down.

I still can’t believe that this table has broken down. It’s been with me for so many years throughout my growing-up process, from doing school homework to doing freelance work. *emo mode on* It could be the age or maybe the flood for the past few years that has weaken the table’s wood. Whatever it is, time to change a new one. So, we had a table hunting at an indoor and outdoor furniture shop, flipped through the catalog, found what I liked, ordered and sent to my house on that day itself.

The new table is slightly larger than the old one and has a ‘grown-up’ or ‘office’ feeling.

Anyway, time to get back to work cause no one will hijack *joke* my comp now. Boyfriend has flew back to KL this morning which means I’m back to my old-boring-routine.

Preparing for vacation

I’ll off to KL + Perhentian Island (no more Redang, fully book. Bleh.) next week with Mum and bro. It will be a one-week-trip, but enough to make me busy with the preparation. Not panic with the packing but in finishing some work and finding new work. At the same time, (somewhat) taking care of my ten-year-old-cousin (from Jakarta). Not much different after one year, still that short, talkative, game-freak, good-memory. Hey, he still remembers and asks about ‘koko Andrew’.

Come to think of it, this will be the first time ever I take a proper-vacation-leave since I started my freelance career one year ago. Put aside my previous trips to KL cause I still worked like usual on weekday, except I had the chance to go out and have fun more often, but never completely left the work and computer for more than 2 days.

The bad side of being a freelancer (and the relation of taking leave):
1. working as a freelancer means there will be no one in the ‘office’ when I am away. Unlike when I was working with ‘the man’, I had colleagues that were ready to replace/resume/handle/help a bit when I was not around. So, it’s either rush the work before off for vacation or resume back after the vacation.
2 Working as a freelancer means when I am away, I cannot do the work, income will be pretty dry, which equals to unpaid leave.

The good side:
1. I can take leave whenever I want and it’s not limited to 12 – 14 days in a year.
2. Can work from anywhere, even when I am on vacation (if I choose to), as long as there is laptop and internet connection. Basically, anywhere can be the office. Like last 2 months, my ‘office’ was based in KL for almost one month. My dream would be: being able to travel around the world while working with the internet and laptop. Probably a month in New York, next month in Paris. *dream on*

I choose to..

I was finishing my card design when the phone rang. It was from this particular company looking for me and asked whether I still have the interest to apply for graphic designer position at their company. Eh? *question mark popped up around my head* I don’t remember that I send any resume within this past few months.

But luckily I still have a good memory. I remember I sent my resume to them at the end of 2007 (more than a year ago), when I was about to resign from previous company. I got the interview at that time but I declined it due to some reason.

This time around, it is still a NO from me. I’m not going back to work 8-5 anytime soon, not until we sort this LDR thing out. You know how hassle it is when both parties work full time and having LDR at the same time. Adds up the OT (read: overtime) and whatever extra work, we will be too tired to have a normal conversation via msn by the time we get back home and might ended up with quarrel. Not to forget, we will only have 10 – 12 days of paid leaves per year. There goes the communication and the frequency of meeting, which means the end of the relationship. Ugh. I don’t want this and I don’t want to go back slaving for a salary around $150 – 200 per month. That would took me years of slaving and saving to buy a tv stand and plasma tv.

So, well, I choose to… continue freelancing for now.

Note:
Although this is not the first time I received such a phone call, I am still surprise to know that some companies actually dig the archive of job applications when there is a vacancy and so on.